First
Corinthians 1:9, "God is faithful, through Whom
ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus
Christ our Lord." "...called into the
fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." Ijust want to bracket with that verse two other
fragments in the same letter which will come back to us
as we go on. In chapter 10:1-5:
"I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers
were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the
sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all
drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that
spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was
Christ. Nevertheless with most of them God was not
pleased; for they were overthrown in the
wilderness."

Notice
the emphasis that the Apostle Paul is making on the word,
"all." This is the whole object of what
he is saying: he says, all, all, all, BUT WITH MOST, not
ALL, "but with most of them God was not pleased;
for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these
things were our examples, to the intent we should not
lust after evil things."

Now
please read on through verse 13 and just retain that
passage in your minds. Then come over to the Second
Letter of Corinthians, and let us remember that the two
letters are one in this, that they are both addressed to
the same people and are part and counterpart of the same
instruction. 2 Corinthians 4:6, "It is God Who
said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,'" or,
as another version puts it, "God said, 'Let light
be, Who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face ofJesus Christ.'"

Let us
see one more fragment from the next chapter, and, of
course, in the original there are no chapters: it is one
continuous line of teaching. In chapter 5, verse 17,
there are the very well-known words, "Wherefore ifany man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old
things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But,
all things are out from God."

"Called
into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our
Lord." Thisis our third step in relation
to that call and our fellowship. Thus far we have seen
that the new beginnings of God in relation to His
ultimate purpose, His eternal purpose, are all by way of
what is called a "call." That word signified a
change in the Divine economy, a change in the Divine
progress. When God had made the garden, the earth, and
man, and had placed man in the garden and was able to say
of everything, "It is very good," God never had
to call: He just was there. He was there with man without
any necessity for calling or seeking. It was spontaneous.
But as soon as man sinned, and his conscience fell into
condemnation, and he hid himself, God came into the
garden and called unto Adam. - "Adam, where art
thou?"

That was
the first call in the Bible, and it is the first note in
the long, long drawn out call through the ages. It
represented a changed position in everything, and God is
now, from that moment, represented as the
"calling" or the "seeking" God. As we
have seen earlier, He has been calling right down through
the ages. He called Abraham: "Abraham,
Abraham." He called Moses: "Moses,
Moses" and so on. As we have indicated, every
time the call alighted upon a human life, that call
related that human life in some way to His Son, Jesus
Christ.

Here in
Corinthians we have this call, not as a separate call,
but as the one continuous call of God through the ages
lighting upon the people in Corinth as God passes by, so
to speak, and calls to them, and they make a response.
They do make a response. I believe that there are some
better people in Corinth than you would be inclined to
believe when you read it, but these people, good or not
so good, had made a response to the call. About them all
the apostle says, "Ye were called into fellowship
with God's Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord."

The
point is that here in Corinth, or wherever that sound of
the call of the SEEKING God is heard, it is
included in the long, long call or thought of God from
the beginning when man had to be called. The necessity
was to call him because he had gotten away, and the call
will go on until the time when the last trump shall
sound, the final note of the age-long call. Then He will
call us to be with Himself. He will call us up, and we
shall hear the call. I trust that we all shall hear the
call.

Here in
Corinth and in our passage which brings the thing to us,
to peoples, to a company of people wherever they are,
here then we are found right in this long, drawn out call
of the seeking God. His call in the past has been
fragmentary, periodic, in different ways to different
people in different situations, and it has been in no
completeness and finality. All these fragments of the
continuous call have been coming together, making up the
full call until He appears in flesh Himself, in the
embodiment of His Son Jesus Christ Who gathers all the
fragments and all the times together and completes the
Divine Call. There is no call after that. It is full now
and in Christ: it is complete, and it is final. He is the
last sound of the Divine call.

We are
called into the fullness of this continuous call of God
through the ages, all summed up now in Jesus Christ Who
we know from the gospel stories as God now here, present,
manifest in the flesh, a seeking God. "Forthe
Son of man has come (to seek and) to save that
which" when? - way back in the garden "was
lost." He is now the completeness of the Voice
of the seeking God. He is God in fullness and finality.

We have
already seen in this passage that that call, 1
Corinthians 1:9, was the long call through the ages into
which believers at different times and in different
places are called, are joined. Now here is a very
significant thing as we move on. What we say may be very
simple and may sound very elementary, but it is a very
important thing that we should always see parts in their
relationship to the whole; or, to put it in another way,
we must always have the comprehensive, the all inclusive
context or setting of any part of anything that we have.

You see,
Christianity, the evangelical Christianity, has been
reduced to fragments so that you get a constant drumming
upon one fragment of the whole counsel of God. People
become taken up entirely with a part, a fragment. It may
to them be very wonderful. They may even think that it is
everything; but they draw a circle around this particular
aspect of truth, or a practice, or an experience, and
make it the finality of everything. And that is why we
have so many immature Christians and such weakness in the
Body of Christ. It is very necessary for us to see every
part in its full and comprehensive setting of the
counsels of God from eternity if we are going to grow.

Our
grasp must always be far beyond our reach. We must always
find that God is ahead of us. He is a long way ahead of
us. We have not yet attained. Neither have we at the end
of the fullest life attained, nor are we already
complete. The Lord is still ahead of us, a long way
ahead. If I may say as one who has been trying to catch
up to God for sixty years, today He is so far ahead I
just cannot, cannot get up to Him. He is beating me to it
all the way. Yes, it is very true, and I hope no one here
will ever think they have attained or think that they
have got it all, all the answers, and they know. And if
you go on with the Lord, you will find that after the
longest life you will have to say, "Well, I have not
yet attained. I do not know. I am more today out of my
depths of comprehension than ever I was. The Lord has yet
more light and truth to break forth from His Word."

Also,
may I say in parenthesis that I do not believe it is a
right thing to try and reduce everything for young
Christians to utter simplicity. Some of the best
Christians I know and the most useful to God are those
who came into the place and the sphere where the fullest
counsels of God were being given far beyond their
spiritual age or growth. Yet, they listened; they
absorbed; they wondered. It was beyond them, but what
came to them was, "My, I have come into something
tremendous. If this is all true, how great is the thing
that I have been brought into by simple faith in Jesus
Christ." So I am not for just whittling it down and
making it so very, very simple. No, stay beyond them.
Every time make them feel, "My, this is beyond me,
but it is very wonderful." Draw them on.

We must
get our faith at every stage and every part in the
context of the whole purpose of God. If we just have
tidbits and make bits of everything, we are not going to
grow and lots of other things are going to come in. Well,
all that we have said thus far is an introduction to the
process of the fellowship of the call.

Now, I
think here is something quite impressive and instructive.
The Holy Spirit is writing these letters, the New
Testament, and He is writing to the Corinthians. We
believe that behind the writer, the man or the men, the
Holy Spirit was dictating, and the ultimate result of the
writing is an expression of the mind of the Spirit; and
He is the Eternal Spirit. He is not only the Holy Spirit
of A.D. 40, when some of these things were written: He is
not only the Spirit in that era, you see. He is not only
the Holy Spirit of Corinth and the people there, but He
is the Holy Spirit of all eternity and of the universe,
the universe of God's thoughts and intentions.

The Holy
Spirit has not left off speaking in time, has not left
the wilderness in which Israel was forty years. With
these people, He is back there. No, go even further back.
He has not left the time or the hour, whenever that was,
that the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the deep,
and God said, "Let light be." That is now, in
the eternal now. The Holy Spirit here in Corinth at this
particular time is moving right back. There is no past,
present, or future with the Eternal God: it is all now
with Him. So what was in the wilderness with Israel is
for the Corinthians now: "These things were written
for our example." That is now, and it is very
important and very interesting and significant that the
Holy Spirit does this. He reaches back to early
activities and movements of God in His goings toward His
full and final intention.

Here is
the same God Who said back in Genesis, "Let there be
light," saying now in this apostolic age, "Let
there be light" to shine into hearts. The same thing
as then, now. God, the same God of the fiat, "Let
light be," has shined into our hearts.

Also,
the God, Who back in time created heaven and earth and
all things, has now created in Christ Jesus a new
creation. In Christ Jesus, there is a new creation. The
old things have passed away; behold, all has become new.
This Word to the Corinthians, and all the Letters in the
Bible, are not out of man. They are not out from man:
they are out from God. Man is not producing anything now
in Christ. In Christ, the first and the last is out from
God.

That was
the law of the life of the Lord Jesus, and a very strong
law it was for Him. It was imperative. "The Son can
do nothing out from Himself." It is a pity that the
Greek words "of Himself" have been so
translated. It should be "out from Himself" -
"The Son can do nothing out from Himself." He
is producing a new creation, a new order of man, a new
economy, which is all of God. How testing that is! How
challenging that is! We are ruled out in this. That is
the argument of the first part of the Letter to the
Corinthians. We are out of it. "The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit. He cannot know
them." See all the great negative of God upon that
former creation where this old man is put aside, ruled
out, and where everything from first to last is "out
from God" in this new creation. There is such a
challenge in that.

If you
and I go on with the Lord long enough, sooner or later we
are destined to come to the place of utter helplessness
in the things of God. In the things of God, we find that
we cannot cope, cannot explain, resolve or sort out.
Neither can we reconstitute nor give the answer. The Lord
has got to answer our questions.No man is an
authority in this way. No man is a specialist in this
way. The very best of God's servants is limited to get
from God the answer. You see, we are back in the creation
where all is of God. Adam did not bring any of it into
being. God did, and it is all now in the last Adam, all
out from God.

So the
Holy Spirit reaches back in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4 to
creation, to the fiat of Divine Light, and in 1
Corinthians, chapter 10 to Israel in the wilderness. In
what position does the Holy Spirit regard these people in
Corinth as being? It is rather a terrible thing, but here
we see that the Holy Spirit looks upon these people in
Corinth as being exactly the same in position as Israel
was in the wilderness. Again and again the Holy Spirit
comes down on this warning about Israel in the
wilderness. "It is you, written for your examples.
That is where you are. These things were written that we
should not lust, that we should not... and that we should
not... and that we should not perish." - "All
passed through the sea... were all baptized unto Moses in
the cloud and in the sea." All partook of the same
spiritual food, the same spiritual drink. Upto
this point in the Scripture, you are in that
"all." Now the great divide comes. Are you in
the majority who perished, or are you in the
"some" who survived and went through? The
Spirit says, "You are in the same position,
Corinthians."

The
majority in Christianity, as it is today, are in the
position of Israel in the wilderness. The majority in the
wilderness belonged to that great mass who never got
through and who never entered into all the intention of
God in their call and their fellowship with His Son. I
believe that the New Testament teaches that it is
possible for Christians to fail to come to the fullness
to which they were called in Christ and, in that sense,
fall by the way, come short. I believe the New Testament
as a whole thunders on this. It really does. If you want
to know who the overcomers are in the Book of Revelation,
they are just the people who went on and go right on and
go right through. They do not stop short and, in that
sense, perish by the way.

There is
an "ALL," and there is a "SOME."
They did all come out. They did all these other things,
but with some of them, God was not well pleased. He could
not say, "It is very good." He could not say, "My
beloved... in whom I am well pleased."

There is
one all inclusive factor and principle governing this
whole issue, governing everything in the life of the
believer, and it is this principle that Paul was
thrusting like a sword into the situation at Corinth. As
we said earlier, the ultimate issue is God's place. That
is what is going to determine and be the criterion in the
end; however, the principle that governs everything in
relation to that full end and that governs this big
question of the all and the some, is a matter of the
heart. The undivided heart is the principle governing
everything. That is precise, concise, and very pointed.
Take that back through the Bible and apply that as you
go. Book by book, the big, governing principle deciding
everything is the matter of the heart, divided or
undivided. For our purpose the undivided heart is God's
principle in this whole matter of attaining, of going
through, of arriving. So in the wilderness, the whole
trouble with "the most" of them was the divided
heart.

We must
go back again to the Book of Genesis to get our context.
What does the Book of Genesis have to say? It says many
things to us, but the thing that is paramount in this
book is the pairs. It is a book of pairs, people in
pairs. You have Cain and Abel. Two different categories,
are they not? You have Abraham and Lot, Jacob and Esau,
Isaac and Ishmael. We have pairs, in two different
categories, perhaps coming from a common stem, but one
takes one line and the other takes another line
altogether. They part on the way, and what is the thing
that is determining that separation, that parting of the
ways? One line has an undivided heart: the other has a
divided heart.

Abel had
an undivided heart, a heart just for God. Cain - well, he
is in the line of Saul. If we were going out of the
Pentateuch into the other books, we should come unto
David and Saul as a pair. We would see the divided heart
of Saul and the undivided heart of David. We also see
Abraham and Lot, Abraham as a man with the undivided
heart and Lot as a man who had interests in this world
other than God's. Lot's own interests revealed his
divided heart.

Then we
see Isaac and Ishmael, and their history, as well as this
spiritual principle, declares the difference between
them. Isaac had his very existence on the basis of an
intervention from heaven, on the basis of the power of
resurrection from the dead. His beginning is wholly of
God, and he lives a quiet life. You may find some fault
with Isaac, but the fact is that he is just there.

Now that
may be a very good thing. It might be possible that you
are just there. You may not be an Abraham. You may not be
a David. You may not be one of these great ones, but you
can be there walking up and down in the land. Does it
mean that because you are just here on the earth that you
have no significance? By his very presence on earth,
Isaac signifies the Almighty power of God: he signifies
the supernatural behind his very existence for he is the
embodiment of the power of resurrection.

Read
your New Testament in that connection. In the Letter to
the Hebrews, it says that Abraham's body was now "as
good as dead," but he believed that God was able
to raise him from the dead. You say, "Well, I have
no public ministry." You may have had, and the Lord
may have asked you to just lay it down. You may not be a
very prominent person in the Christian world of whom
people are taking note, but you are here holding the
ground for God and standing on the ground of God's
absolute ability to keep you alive when naturally it
would not be so. Do not think that because you are an
Isaac that you do not count as much as the others. You
are "just there" walking up and down in the
land, opening the wells.

Isaac is
a man of the wells. He re-opens the wells that the
Philistines have filled in. He is a man of life whose
testimony is one of life in the midst of death, and he is
just that. But should we say, "just that"? What
a thing that is for some of us! We would have been dead
long ago if it had not been for this great, great truth
of the power of His resurrection.

Go into
the land of Ishmael today, and what do you find? You find
no living testimony, no life. There is an atmosphere of
death. If you go to the land of Ishmael, of Islam, you
will feel it: the atmosphere is death. So we see Ishmael
set over against Isaac. There is a divide between the
two, and the principle in Isaac's deciding is the
undivided heart.

What
shall we say of Jacob and Esau? There is quite a
processing to extricate Jacob for something wonderful,
but God is "the God of Jacob." Wedo
know something about Jacob because we know something
about ourselves. Yet, deep down in Jacob even though it
may be largely buried and covered up by his natural
makeup, there is something in Jacob that is not there in
Esau. What is it? It is a reach for God. He has a
valuation of what is of God. The birthright, which is
God's own gift, is more to him than anything else. Jacob
may be a difficult fellow and may be all that you might
say about this supplanter, but somehow in his being there
is this concern for God's interest.

God met
him on that ground at Bethel. God met him on that ground
at Jabbok. Even with all the externals, the vicissitudes
of life, the unworthy things about Jacob, there is
something in this man which God has planted. There is
this principle of a heart for God. This heart for God
comes out in his later life when he has been worn out.
When this supplanting realm in him has been worn out, we
hear him talking, and he is referring, attributing
everything, to God. Jacob says over and over,
"because God." In essence he says, "When I
was away, when I was astray, when I was all that you
could say bad about me, yes, God had His Eye upon me. God
had His Hand on me. God was interwoven with my
life." Deep down, there was this something that gave
him a heart for God, better than his own heart.

Esau is
of God's birthright; yet, the attitude that prevails in
him is that of "Give me a good square meal, satisfy
the whim of this moment, and you can have all the
other." The Word says that he "despised his
birthright." One can see the great divide and
difference between Jacob and Esau.

Let us
now pass on from the pairs in Genesis to Exodus. Come to
Israel now and move from the individuals to the corporate
body of this nation. The first great act of God is to cut
in between them and Egypt. God must get Israel on to
ground where He can get to work in them, and this ground
is that of the wilderness. What is happening in Exodus in
the wilderness? Israel is out of Egypt, but Egypt is not
out of them. Again and again, they hark back to Egypt.
"Oh, for the onions and the garlic of Egypt. Was
there not bread enough back in Egypt? Were we brought out
here to die of hunger? Were there not enough graves in
Egypt that we should die in a wilderness?" Egypt is
not out of their heart. The heart out there is divided:
that is the whole story. Read Psalm 106.

If you
have a question about this divided heart in the
wilderness, and are not sure of this, read in the Fifth
Book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 2.
Here in Deuteronomy is a review of all that has gone
before in Israel's life, and in Deuteronomy 8:2, it says:
"Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy
God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to
humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine
heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or
no."

Forty
years of heart testing is a tremendous thing, is it not?
I believe that in the true, original meaning of this
scripture, it is not that God did not know what was in
their heart, but it meant that God "might make thee
to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep
His commandments, or no."

The
Apostle Paul says, "You Corinthians are back there
in the wilderness. This testing of the heart is going on
in you. There is a finding out of what is in your
heart." The question is coming through the Word,
"Where is your heart?" Read the letter again,
and you will find out where their heart is.

Now let
me say, without intending to give offense, that this
letter is the letter of the "pentecostalism" of
those days. The gifts of the Spirit are here, more than
in any other part of the New Testament, enumerated,
underlined, recognized. Yet, with all that is said
concerning the presence of the gifts, it is proved that
the heart in Corinth was for self-glory,
self-gratification, soulish - only out for enjoyment,
even in Divine gifts. When it came to that of these
things, it was the things that mattered. The gifts were
everything to them.

As we
see in the life of Saul, God's people can hold Divine
things for selfish ends, for personal ends, for
self-glory. Now, if you take these Divine things away and
suddenly set aside all these phenomena and
manifestations and all that is called evidences (it is
the soul that must have evidences), what have you got
left??

I have
known, and this is the tragedy again and again, people
who have made so much of the thing we are speaking of.
Then something has happened, and the thing is stopped.
For them, it is as though everything is all gone. What
then becomes of them? Unless they have a turn in their
heart toward the Lord and not a turn toward the gifts,
their history will be much like Israel who died in the
wilderness. They did not have the Lord: they only had the
thing. Therefore, since the thing seemed to be taken
away, they had nothing left. For them, these sensational
evidences were everything.

We are
in that kind of age today. It is becoming more and more a
psychic age. It is an age of the soul just spilling over,
asserting itself, taking control of everything in
Christianity as well as outside of it - a soulish age.
Now if you are not seeing and understanding all that I am
saying, let us come back again to examine the trouble
with Israel in the wilderness. If you turn over to the
Letter to the Hebrews (which is of course a summary of
all the economy of those times), and come to chapter
four, you will see Israel in the wilderness again. It is
very significant and instructive to note how the Word
comes forth in verse twelve: "For the Word of
God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any
twoedged sword, piercing... to the dividing... ofsoul and spirit...." In the wilderness, there
is a dividing of soul and spirit.

Come
back to Corinthians and your earlier chapters. First, it
states, "Now the natural man...": this is the
man of soul. In the Greek, the very word
"natural" is the word "soulical."
Next, it says, "But he that is
spiritual...." Herewe have two different
men in one, a soulical man and a spiritual man in one
body, and God is cleaving between the two. In the
wilderness, He is trying to do that with Israel: He is
trying to get in between the soul and spirit. You see,
the soul is that which must have these proofs and
evidences. Soulish men must have something along natural
lines, such as evidences or phenomena, to prove that
their position is right; therefore, because they are
soulish, Israel complains and murmurs and grumbles when
they are called out into a place where God only is to be
their recourse and resource.

This
dividing work between the ALL and the SOME isa terrific thing, is it not? In Corinth, the
Corinthians are back there in the wilderness with this
dividing of the soul and spirit taking place. Christians
can be there, and this piercing, dividing, setting
asunder work of the Spirit of God is sometimes a
devastating thing. If you do not understand, do not
worry. You will understand some day if you have not got
there; however, some of you will understand that the Lord
does not feed His truest, most devoted children with a
lot of evidence and phenomena. He starves that side of
our being so often. He says, "Trust Me, not for what
I can do, not for the evidence that I give you, but trust
Me for Myself." This is very testing, but that is
the issue in the wilderness. We are not only to be out
with God from the world, from Egypt, but also the world,
Egypt, is to be out of us.

Be
careful that you are not hankering for this realm again.
Are you after the evidence? My, how I have seen dear
Christian people just prostrating themselves, groaning
and crying, almost screaming for evidence - these
"sign" things. Please, do not be offended with
me because I am trying to get to the heart of our
present, complicated situation; and it is becoming more
complicated because dear Christians and dear men of God,
who have been greatly used, are creating an emotional,
psychic situation that is involving simple Christians in
things which are, sooner or later, going to be a great
disillusionment and an offense. It will bring
"offendedness" with the Lord, and that is just
what the devil is after.

Can you
bear with this word? Can you receive it, seeing that we
have been "called into the fellowship of His Son
Jesus Christ our Lord." Look at the life of our
Lord. See His life: "He emptied Himself, became
obedient unto death, the death of the Cross."

We have
been looking at Exodus because in it we see the
inwardness of this circumcision, the dividing of the
heart or the making of the heart whole for God and,
therefore, undivided. Now, let us look at Leviticus. One
may ask, "What is the Book of Leviticus?" It
contains a lot of things, and, perhaps, most of you do
not enjoy reading it. Some of you young people may find
it a bit dry and difficult to understand, but it is a
part of the goings of God. It is part of the call into
the fellowship of His Son, and that which Leviticus
represents can be summed up in this - everything suitable
to the pleasure of the Lord, the Presence of the Lord in
satisfaction.

Does
that matter to you? I am sure that it must. What matters
is not the amount of work that we can do for the Lord or
the amount of ministry that can be accomplished. I am
prepared to let that go any day; indeed, the Lord is
having a hard time keeping me in it because it means real
battles to stay in the ministry. Whether I am in public
or private, in ministry or out of it, wherever I am or
whatever I am, the thing that does matter is the Presence
of the Lord being with me. Is the Lord with me? Is the
Lord with you? That is the ultimate thing, the final
thing, the conclusive thing, the everything. We want the
Lord to be able to say, "I am with you."

You
cannot always feel the Presence of the Lord. I cannot
always say that I feel this wonderful Presence, and if
you can, I envy you because you have got further along
than I have. However, I do not always feel it, and it is
not always an ecstasy. It is a walk of faith, but, be
that as it may, the thing that matters to you and me is
the Presence of the Lord. This is the main point in the
Book of Leviticus, and all turns around that.

All the
detail in this book is showing forth a situation that
makes it possible for the Lord to be present, and the
Word that sums up this situation is "He is a Holy
Lord." In the scriptures of Leviticus, we can see
that, as it is described, everything is being gathered up
into one focal point. Everything is moving from the level
of the common people, gradually rising in rank and
position and importance, through the Levites, up through
the sons of Aaron until you reach the head, the top,
Aaron, the high priest. We can gravitate from Aaron's
feet upward to his forehead and see that there is
inscribed, "Holiness unto the Lord." Onthat ground, the Lord is present: "The Glory ofthe Lord filled the tabernacle." Theyall
bow and worship. There is a solemn awe, but it is a deep,
joyful awe of rest and peace because the Lord is present.
The Presence of the Lord is rest and peace. It is
something very wonderful, deeper than words. "The
Lord is in our midst."

When we
feel His Presence and know He is there, we are silenced.
We make no noise, no chatter: we do not gossip. There is
something that is suitable to the Presence of the Lord,
and that is the Book of Leviticus in every detail. All
the offerings and the feasts are suitable ground for the
Lord. He is glad and satisfied to be there because all is
speaking of His Son, every feast and every offering is
speaking of His Son, the Lord Jesus.

Our life
is on Holy Ground with Jesus Christ because we are
"called unto His fellowship." There is that
wonderful benediction, "in Whom I am well
pleased." We have not yet gotten to the place
where everything in our lives is altogether Christ, but
we are called for it to be so. This call of His
fellowship comes, and we begin to move in a course toward
an expected end where Christ shall be "all in
all." Knowing ourselves as we do, we know not
how that is going to be, and it almost seems impossible
to believe; but, if God grant, at the end we shall hear
the words, "Well done, thou good and faithful
servant: ...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
This will be spoken because everything is of Christ, "in
Whom I am well pleased," and what shall bring
this about is an undivided heart.

I am not
going into the Book of Deuteronomy, because I have said
that it is a comprehending of all past history: it is a
reiteration and a re-exhortation. So let us look at the
Book of Numbers. It has been called a book of wanderings,
but I believe that to be incorrect. It is a book of
journeyings. Forty times in this book, the words occur,
"they journeyed." They were moving, perhaps
going around in circles, but they were on the way. They
were moving in the wilderness where God was doing this
work of searching the heart. Remember, Deuteronomy 8:2
says that it was "to know what was in thine
heart," or "to make thee know what was in thy
heart...." The Book of Genesis and Exodus and
Leviticus and Numbers is the whole course of the heart
searching work of God. It is the dividing of the heart;
in other words, it is the setting on one side of what is
not acceptable to the Lord and on the other side the
gathering and securing of what is of the Lord.

The
great tragedy is that only two of that great, mighty host
got through and got over. Only Joshua and Caleb became
the overcomers of that age: the others did not. Oh, may
we not be as those who did not get through! The Lord is
doing this kind of work with us, is He not? Is He doing
this with you? He is doing this with me. The Lord is
seeing what is in our hearts, and He is testing us by all
manner of things to see where our hearts are.

You see,
He brings us to the place where we can honestly say,
"Lord, You're Life for me, and I have no other life
than You. But for You, I would be better put in the
grave. I have no interest to stay in this life, in this
world, or on this earth, if You are not in it,
Lord." God is seeking to bring a people to this
place, even in spiritual things. Dr. A. B. Simpson said
it this way: "Once it was the blessings, now it is
the Lord." That thought is much like the vindication
of David which was, "He set the Lord always before
his face."

May the
Lord grant that in us He is finding for Himself a people
of the undivided heart. When He puts us to the test, may
He find that we say, "All right, this can go and
that can go, anything and everything can go, but Himself.
If only He remains the all, then nothing else
matters." So be it.

Let
us pray. We commit the Word to Thee, Lord. We commit our
hearts to Thee. We commit the issue to Thee. Work on
then, Lord, 'til on our hearts eternal light shall break,
within Thy Presence, perfected, we satisfied shall wake.'
Help us with all the trials of the way, the
testings of the way, and may we come out of every one in
the triumph of the Lord. The Lord has triumphed! We ask
this in the Name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus. Amen.